


I Don't Wanna Be By Myself

by frostiwars



Category: The Amazing World of Gumball
Genre: Angst, But Only a Little Bit - Freeform, Enemies to Lovers, Fluff and Angst, I Tried, I'm Bad At Tagging, Language, Meta, Multi, Post-Canon, Post-Finale, The Void, This Is STUPID, but extremely fast, gumball is a bi icon, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25992496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frostiwars/pseuds/frostiwars
Summary: Gumball Watterson is a wonderful boyfriend, even if he may or may not have a crush on his nemesis that is extremely obvious to everyone in a five mile radius.Of course that doesn't really matter at the moment because the world is ending and the twelve year old boy is hurtling through the air at mach speed.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Penny Fitzgerald/Gumball Watterson, Rob/Gumball Watterson
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43





	I Don't Wanna Be By Myself

**Author's Note:**

> first of all, i'm sorry for how tonally dissonant this is, this is just how i am. second of all, hey! first post! i thought it would be something else but this was easier/quicker to write. third of all, this is sorta human au, but only because that's how i visualize things, and it isn't very intrusive. if you're curious what the designs look like, i might updated this with the ref sheet someday. 
> 
> FOURTHLY sorry for being so angsty. and bad at this.

Gumball hurtled through the staticy landscape towards a chunk of gray rock floating in the nothingness that was this strange place. He didn’t understand! One minute he was walking with his siblings, the next he was falling into an abyss with everything else following suit. As he fell, he spotted some of his friends and family tumbling through the air off in the distance, along with numerous chunks of Elmore. At least he wasn’t alone, he consoled himself. Everyone else was falling too. 

Gumball waited for ages; it almost felt like he was never gonna hit the ground, or at least that relatively small piece of the ground. The young boy thought he might as well get his bearings. Okay, so he already knew that everyone else had fallen in here, that’s a start. The rest of the world was coming in hot after them, so at least he’d still have most of his stuff, even if some of it might break upon impact… okay most of it. And as he did a barrel roll in midair, he spotted-

Rob. 

The glitchy preteen was sailing through the air right next to him. Great. Of course the universe decided that he’d be stuck on a tiny rock in the middle of nowhere with his worst enemy! (And oh how right Gumball was in thinking that.) Sure, a few weeks, a few days, heck, even YESTERDAY he would’ve been more than fine with being stuck next to Rob. He liked the guy—in a totally platonic sense—despite everything. But he probably was the one that got them all stuck here! All his talk earlier that day about, well, WHATEVER it was, all the times he threatened to destroy Gumball, the time he KIDNAPPED Banana Barbara, had all come to a head. Rob got what he wanted. Was he happy now!? 

These thoughts raced through the kitten’s head, poking his anger more and more until he found himself shooting through the air to grab the boy. As he hooked on to the tall kid, resisting the urge to punch him, Gumball noticed that Rob was completely still. It didn’t even look like he was breathing! But that was ridiculous, he was probably just unconscious. 

Before Gumball had enough time to ponder this conundrum, he felt himself smack against the surprisingly smooth rock and tumble across it, the impact loosening his grip. Gumball felt his spine crackle and snap in probably 50 different way before immediately snapping back into position, like it always did. For some reason, he thought that fall would do more damage, even though he’d fallen from even greater heights and lived before. Gumball flicked his ears, ruffled his hair, and stretched out his spine before finally sitting up. The little boy was tempted to go check on Rob but NO, he was still mad at him. 

What kind of monster would want this to happen? What had he possibly done to make Rob so mad at him? Did it have something to do with his appearance? He’d mentioned his “broken body” before (which Gumball still didn’t understand, he thought Rob looked cool.) Was it his fault, did he push the kid to make all this happen? Or was Rob always just a bad person and he was too caught up in having fun and pretend-fighting to see it… Off in the distance, he spotted Penny’s house sliding out of the world and into the static. He hoped she was okay. He hoped everyone else was okay. Even Tobias, and those two weird guys from Sarah’s old school, and Tina, and Jamie, and Ocho and… Gumball’s thoughts were swarmed by his classmates, his friends, his family, his teachers, the people who just lived in Elmore that he saw on the street. That nice old man that he’d just recently learned the name of. Larry Needlemeyer and Donut Cop. All of them. He knew there was nothing he could do to reach them all in time, he wouldn’t be able to get off this rock until it happened to float to a larger cluster. He just had to sit and beg the universe to let them land. Gumball wrapped his arms around his legs, then his tail around his body, and tried not to cry. 

The tears edged their way out of his eyes anyways, and he let them spill, not even bothering to wipe them off his face. His ears flattened against his head and he bit his lip to try and stifle what would probably be a pathetic gasp for breath. He let himself release all his built up stress and pain and soon started crying over things completely unrelated to his predicament. He cried about his anxieties and self worth, which seemed silly to him in retrospect; he cried about how he lost his favorite drawing last week; he cried until he ran out of things to cry about, and then fell silent. 

Too silent. Shouldn’t Rob have gotten up now? He still had to yell at him. Maybe he snuck away while Gumball was distracted. Still, he was too angry to look at him, so he shouted behind his back, “I hope you’re happy Rob!” 

Nothing. Didn’t matter, he might as well get out his anger.

“Is this what you wanted?! You finally beat me. I guess the only way you thought you could win was by taking the whole ship down! Are you glad? Are you satisfied?” Gumball felt a rage spill out of his mouth that he hadn’t felt in a long time, and he spun around to face Rob. “Was it worth it!?”

Gumball froze at the sight of the preteen lying completely still on the ground. He wasn’t even glitching. 

“D- dude? Are you okay?” He hesitated.. This might just be a trick. Yeah! A trick, that’s all it was! Or- or a misunderstanding! He wasn’t… d- 

HE WASN’T. He couldn’t be. People didn’t die, not like this. Even when they did, they almost always came back! Or they weren’t REALLY dead, they were just hurt in the hospital, having learned their lesson. Rob himself had been blown up and flung into a police car, there’s no way he was dead from that fall! But then again… he was already like this during the fall… 

“Crap…” Gumball muttered under his breath as he inched towards the boy. He was surprised. He’d only ever really been able to say crud before, never anything as bad as crap. Did that mean he could say shi- NOW IS NOT THE TIME, he argued with himself in his head. 

Gumball kneeled next to the boy and cautiously drifted a hand towards his chest. Rob felt so… cold. It sent chills up his spine. Shaking him by the shoulders, he shouted “H- hey! Come on, you gotta get up! You’re not supposed to-“ To what? Die? Win? Make him worry? “Please, this isn’t right, you can’t do this to me!” Gumball’s breath caught in his throat. “I- I hate you, if you die, I’m gonna kill you!” he choked out. It sounded so stupid but he didn’t really care at this point. 

Gumball lowered his ear to Rob’s chest and waited desperately for a heartbeat, tears returning to the corners of his eyes. He would’ve been surprised that he even had anything left to cry, if he wasn’t so focused on the lack of heart rate. But as seconds turned into minutes he felt a sharp pain shoot through his chest and his throat run dry. The little boy felt something compressing in his lungs and he finally gave up, opting to loosen his posture and bury his face in the other boy’s shirt. Gumball realized this was a completely different kind of cry from the last one; it was violent, and it wracked his body with heavy sobs. This wasn’t fair! This wasn’t supposed to happen!! EVEN if Rob trapped them all here, he didn’t deserve to die, he was just a kid like the rest of them! And Gumball was already having his doubts that Rob intended for this to happen. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made, and he couldn’t force himself to hold a grudge against a dead guy. He didn’t even get to tell him that-

“Dude, I’m not dead.” 

………

Rob had jolted awake with something heavy lying on his chest. That something heavy looked an awful lot like blue hair, connected to a pair of blue ears and a whiskered face. Dammit, what happened in the five seconds he must’ve been out? 

He was soon struck with the fact that Gumball was practically flooding his shirt with tears and realized that his nemesis totally thought he’d died. And he was… upset about this? Like, really upset. That’s uh- wow. Okay okay, time to put an end to this ruse.

“Dude, I’m not dead.” 

Gumball practically flew backwards, his face twisting from terror to a painfully fake smile. “Y- yeah, I knew that!” He blushed and averted his eyes. Those eyes soon widened after a short pause. “Wait, NO I DIDN’T!!” 

The cat boy rocketed himself at the glitchy preteen, which said preteen expected to be an attack of some sort but was shocked to find arms wrapped around him. “DUDE YOU CAN’T JUST DO THAT TO ME I THOUGHT YOU DIED WHERE WAS YOUR HEARTBEAT WHERE ARE WE WHAT HAPPENED WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?!?” 

“Okay jeez- slow down! One question at a time please!” Rob tried to wriggle free of the hug to no avail.

“Ah- right right okay uh…” Gumball slightly loosened his grip. “How are you alive? I thought your heart stopped!”

Rob sighed. “I haven’t had a heart beat since…” He couldn’t say ‘escaped the void.’ Wait… yes he could. The show’s over. He could do whatever he wanted in here. “Since I escaped here all those years ago…” 

Gumball was startled by how solemn Rob looked, but even more so the fact that he knew this place. “Wait you’ve been here before? Wh-“

“Why were you so concerned about me dying?” Rob growled before Gumball had the chance to finish. Right, he kinda did just sob profusely on top of his enemy’s not-corpse. 

“Uh… that’s not important,” he blushed. “Wait- I’m supposed to be mad at you!” The blue cat kicked himself out of Rob’s lap and crossed his arms. 

“YOU’RE mad at me?! I should be the angry one here! You ruined my chance to save everyone!” 

Gumball felt a pit in his stomach. “Save everyone? N- no. No, you tried to change us all, make us something we weren’t. You’re lying!” He had to be.

“Oh, you WOULD think that wouldn’t you? I did that so we could escape before THIS happened!”

“So you knew this would happen and instead of trying to stop it, you just SCREWED with us?!” Woah, that was another stronger word than he was  
used to.

“DO YOU REALLY THINK I COULD’VE STOPPED THIS?! I COULDN’T, I’D NEVER BE ABLE TO. IF I COULD REWRITE THE SCRIPT I COULD, BUT I CAN’T!!” Rob flailed his arms in frustration as he ranted at his nemesis. 

“Script? What on EARTH are you talking about?” 

The boy sighed. Welp. It’s not like anything worse could happen now. He might as well explain everything. Rob felt a hand curl around his stomach as he looked at his surroundings. It would never get any easier to explain. 

“Gumball… the show’s script. YOUR show’s script.” The boy opposite to him cocked his ears in confusion. “We… we live in a TV show. Everything we’ve gone through… everything important at least, was written, animated, voice acted, broadcast by someone else, for someone else. We’re just… cartoon characters.” He swallowed dryly and motioned at the last remaining bits of Elmore tumbling into the static, trying to resist the urge to cry. It hurt to say it out loud, even though he knew it was true. The writers made sure of that. 

Gumball’s tail drooped. What? No, no that didn’t make sense… and yet… The blue haired boy’s mind raced, thinking back to all the things he’d gone through in the past 8 years. That was when he remembered things first getting weird. His brain piled up evidence after evidence to why Rob wasn’t completely insane. His face must have shown it as he soon found himself in Rob’s arms, and he suddenly started crying. Again. In a different way, again. It was softer, and resigned. God, he had a lot of tears in him! 

Gumball grabbed on to Rob as the two sank to the ground. “It- I’m not- none of it is real-“

“Well, technically, it is. At least to us.” 

Gumball glanced up at him with confusion.

“Not every single thing has been written out for us, that’d just be impossible for any writer. So some of it has to be real, at least for us. Even if it’s not to the people in their world.” 

Gumball didn’t seem convinced. “How do you know this?” 

“Well, it only made sense. At least to me. Besides, if I didn’t tell myself that, I think I would’ve killed m- done something awful a long time ago.” Rob felt Gumball hold on tighter. 

“S- so, you were trying to stop us from coming in here? Is it cuz the show ended?”

Rob nodded. He was surprised. Maybe Gumball was more perceptive than he gave him credit for. “This is the void. It’s where all the world’s mistakes go.” He paused for a moment, then pushed Gumball away. “Including me.” 

“How’re you a mistake?” 

“I don’t know. I guess I was just some random background character but there’s plenty of those and they didn’t get ditched. They didn’t even write me any parents. I guess I just wasn’t good enough… I broke out when you rescued Molly, but that wasn’t supposed to happen. Or, I guess technically it was. The writers just DECIDED that I should be broken and disfigured by the escape. I was an afterthought, a retcon.” Rob’s voice broke. He didn’t have the energy to yell about this. Not when it hurt so much. 

Rob has two expectations. The first is that Gumball wouldn’t care. He certainly didn’t the first time he told this story. The other would be that he’d fling himself at Rob, crying about how he wasn’t a mistake (lie) and he cared about him (lie) and that he was important (big fat lie.) 

He did not expect to turn and see Gumball glaring at the ground with curled up fists. 

“I remember,” the cat muttered. “I remember all of it.” 

“Wh- even the remote?” 

“The fucking-“ Rob jumped at the language. Well, he did suppose there’d be no censors anymore but still. “Those writers are horrible people. They- they did THAT to you!” He motioned at Rob’s scarred body. “They did THIS to all of us!” He motioned at the void. “And I remember EVERYTHING. I remember this place- Molly, a- and the remote, and the old episodes that I couldn’t- I HATE THEM!” he screamed, slamming his tiny fists on the ground. 

After all, why force a memory loss that’s not needed anymore? 

…………

After a few minutes of recuperation, calming down, and eventual awkward silence, the two decided to get to know each other better while waiting for their little island to float to the greater cluster. It was better than the alternative existential crisis. 

“Well, I know your edgy backstory… is there anything else important? Living situation? Favorite color? Favorite food?” Gumball gestured towards the tall boy. 

“Well, I wouldn’t call it edgy. It barely even qualifies as tragic.”

“ABUpupup- It’s VERY tragic! Now, continue.”

“Right. As for the others… I didn’t really have a home? I kinda just. Lived in the dump.” Rob folded his legs closer to himself. “I don’t have a favorite color stop laughing. And… I always liked stealing the hot dogs from the gas station Larry works at.”

“Which one?” Gumball snickered. He felt his heart skip a beat when Rob laughed back. It was subtle, but nice! “Anything you wanna ask me?”

“I kinda already know a lot about you. It’s kinda hard not to when your nemesis is the main character.” 

His ears drooped slightly. “Oh… okay.” 

Rob looked around, almost as if to check if anyone was looking. “Actually, I do want you to answer my question from earlier.” 

“Hm?” 

“Why were you acting like you cared if I died? And… looking at me like that.” Rob’s voice lowered to a growl. Back on the defensive as always; surely that had to be some sort of joke, or a ploy against him. It was impossible for anyone to actually care about him.

“OH. Uh well…” Gumball sighed, chuckled to himself, then smiled at Rob with a cocked eyebrow. Now was as good a time as any to expunge his feelings. He’d already spent so long today crying and raging, he might as well let something good out of his system. 

“Well maybe I like you. More than I like my average nemesis.” He scooted a few inches closer. “Care about you perhaps?” he said with a bit of a swing to his voice.

Rob, unfortunately, flinched, rolled his eyes, and glared down at the shorter 12 year old. “Yeah, suuuuure. Don’t lie to me. Besides, don’t you have a girlfriend?” He couldn’t believe Gumball was playing with his feelings like that. (Did he know about the thing? It’d be weird if he did. The Ex was just a joke right? He couldn’t read minds, right?!) 

Gumball cleared his throat and pointed to his head to signify both big-brainedness and blue hair. “Well, blue is in the bi flag, so maybe I’m telling the truth.” Oh God this was stupid he was totally gonna blow it. “After all, I have two hands.” 

Rob stared blankly, clearly not getting it. Two hands? Almost everyone has two hands. What was he getting a-

“Oh.” 

“OH!” 

Rob felt his body’s static fizzling and vibrating at the highest rate he’d ever felt and for the splittest of seconds, he could’ve sworn his heart was racing. No way- No FUCKING way! This couldn’t be real; this was too good to be true! Gumball couldn’t possibly also like him, that’s ridiculous! He subconsciously bit his hand as his brain exploded with possibilities. He spent so long wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn’t even realize Gumball was waiting patiently for a response.

With an extremely wavery voice and excessively glitchy limbs, Rob sputtered out, “I’ll think about it.”

“Aw come on man! I just poured out my whole dang confession to you and all I get is an I’ll think about it?” 

Rob sighed. That was more like it. “I- I’m sorry I’m just caught off guard is all. I didn’t expect you to like me! I didn’t expect ANYONE to like me. I didn’t think anyone would LIKE me.”

It was Gumball’s turn to sigh. “Dude, if we’re gonna have a relationship, we gotta work on the self deprecation. I mean, I’m no master but I at least try and PRETEND I’m confident. But of course I like you! I had so much fun being your nemesis, and- and it broke my heart when I thought you weren’t interested in me anymore. I got really worried when you went all serious for a little bit, but you always came back just having fun, messing around.” 

“Well… it wasn’t really a game to me. If I wasn’t a villain, I’d just get sent back here.” 

“And I see that now! I get it! But you’re also really clever! I don’t think it’s your fault your plans never worked.” Gumball coughed at the universe. “And you look REALLY cool. At least to me. I know you might not see it that way, but you gotta admit those are some badass scars!” He motioned towards Rob’s general appearance.

“I guess. They still hurt though. They never heal, just fester…”

“Maybe you should actually put bandages on them then.”

“Oh yeah.” 

Gumball facepalmed. “I take back what I said about you being clever.”

“Hey! Maybe I just wanna feel alive!” Rob shouted half jokingly.

“What did I just say?” 

“Right, right.” 

“But, yeah, the point is: I have plenty of reasons to like you!” Gumball grabbed Rob’s hand and looked him in the eye. “And I’m sure everyone else will too.”

“We’re still stuck here. Probably until we die…” Rob couldn’t help but think about the downside.

“True, but everyone’s with us this time. It may not be the same place, but it’s the same people. I’m sure we’ll figure something out. Oh! Speaking of which!” 

Gumball pointed at the cluster of rocks they were approaching. He spotted a group of people on it: what seemed to be nearly half his classmates and his whole family! 

The boy stood up and gestured gentlemanly at a stair-like set of rocks, still holding Rob’s hand. 

“After you.”


End file.
